It's over.
John McCain went down to defeat today in what was an obvious, predictable loss.
Claiming to be a "maverick" while in reality being anything but, Senator McCain came across instead as alternatively a petulant child and an apologist for bankers that have robbed America blind for the previous six years. As one of the "Aye" voters both for the $700 billion robbery of taxpayer bill (an affront that Barack Obama shares) and the "bankruptcy reform" bill that put a noose around American's necks, he finally "got his" on the national political stage.
America spoke, and said not just "no", but "hell no."
Unlike when we spoke to you Senator McCain when you were voting for the bailout, this time you're obligated to listen.
This is coming from someone who bought a high-priced ticket to one of McCain's fundraisers in July, hoping to be able to have an open discussion and debate with Governors Ridge and Keating.
Unfortunately the McCain campaign turned out to be nothing more than apologists for the liars, cheats and frauds.
I called this back in July, and there are times I hate being right.
This is one of them.
In reality there is nothing to like here in this election season. America's economy is headed for the hole in the center of the bowl no matter what we do, and the imperative now must be to guarantee that the bankers and fraudsters don't make off with any more of our money, to claw back what we can, and to protect the funding capacity of our government, not to protect bankers and attempt to do what is mathematically impossible.
I have only faint hope that President-elect Obama will accomplish any of that in his time as President, and even less faith that he will be able to interdict the present idiocy prior to his inauguration.
It takes a strong man to stand up to the banking interests that bribe everyone up and down Washington DC, and until I see that strength I will not commit to being pleased with my vote for President Obama, which I did cast with full knowledge that while a President Obama is only 10% likely to do the right thing, a President McCain was 0% likely to do so.
I do see, however, two possibilities and no middle ground, which gives me some hope. One possibility is that President Obama will proceed to play "pigman handout-a-thon", in which case our nation is headed for an economic collapse that will make The Depression look like a cakewalk.
Should President Obama listen to such idiots as Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, this outcome is assured. Two years from now the Democratic Party will suffer the worst defeat in the history of the Republic, being mortally wounded and forever removed from American Politics. Four years from now President Obama will depart with his tail between his legs and head home to Chicago with a new middle name - "Hoover".
The depths to which American could sink under such a series of mistakes cannot be underestimated. It is entirely possible that a worst-case scenario could come to pass, including a political failure in our nation.
Barack Obama understands what this could mean, since he has ancestors who dealt with not being free men - and one hopes he is conscious of the risk that continuing down the "bailout path" brings in this regard. This risk cannot be overstated; it is REAL. Political and monetary failure, if it occurs, has an extremely high risk of leading to a form of government that is very different than our founding fathers intended, and none of us want to see.
The second possibility is that President Obama actually thinks on his own and comes to recognize that he's not a figurehead, nor is he a puppet of the bankers and fraudsters - that he was sent to Washington DC for a reason.
To imprison all the fraudsters both on Wall Street and Main Street, and recover every nickel possible from their ill-gotten gains for ordinary Americans.
To clean up American Finance and implement The Genesis Plan or something akin to it, forcing full transparency and limits on leverage throughout the financial system.
To tell The American People that no, you cannot have houses appreciate faster than incomes, that the maximum sustainable home price is 3.5x income, and that spending more than 36% of your pretax income on all your debt, housing included, is both unreasonable and unsafe, leaving you one minor household disaster away from bankruptcy.
This pronouncement, along with policies that encourage same, will lead to a rapid revaluation of home prices downward, and clear the market.
To tell The American People that "free trade" sounds fine in theory, but that as practiced over the last 20 years it has led to tremendous distortions in foreign exchange and interest rates, not to mention millions of Americans losing their jobs to overseas workers who aren't better at what they do - they are just cheaper, mostly because they are either coming from or still living in slave-like conditions. Perhaps President Obama will do something to correct that imbalance, although you can bet the "masters of American Capitalism" will scream loud and long about any such attempt.
To tell The American People that the age of bubblenomics is over - that one must earn enough money to buy what one wishes to purchase, and if you can't, then you're unable to afford it - and that this applies to government as well.
To tell The American People that an Obama Administation will not permit The Fed to print money, nor to monetize bad assets - whether they be fraudulent mortgages, bad credit card debt, upside down auto loans or anything else. That such bad debt must instead be forced to default, and those who wrote that paper must eat their loss, no matter how painful and whether or not it results in business failure.
Tough but necessary words - words that are exactly opposite that which President Bush uttered after 9/11.
This is the change that America voted for Senator, now President-Elect Obama.
Is this the change that we truly can believe in, or were those mere words in a Presidential campaign?
We shall soon find out.
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